There is no such thing as healthy feminism. It is literally sick. It is a perversion of what is real. Here is what is real: men and women are different. Why should I treat different things as if they are the same? I'm not going to try to make an apple pie out of asparagus just because the asparagus is fickle and wants to be apples.

You shouldn't treat different things as if they are the same, but the problem here is that treating things (women) differently usually meant treating them not as well (in the past). What is sick about women wanting to be treated fairly in society? Honestly I don't think we're going to agree so I think we should just drop this part.

Saudi Arabia's society works, and no, you cannot dismiss this fact away by pointing out their circumstances. Plenty of sub-Saharan nations are sitting on top of vast fields of natural resources as well; regardless, they remain a collective joke. Their societies don't work, Saudi Arabia's does.

Lol, no, it doesn't. Not for long anyway. They're running a lot of their society on fossil fuels, which are quickly being depleted. They're trying to imitate the west technologically, except that running air conditioners in the middle of the desert constantly uses a lot of energy. They have child abuse rates that are close to one in four being abused. The women in their society are pretty much treated as lower class (most women are assigned a 'guardian'), and few can ever hope to attain any real power. Lots of men marry girls who are just barely pubescent, which has an effect on the overall quality of women's education. The problem with Saudi Arabia is that they're trying to be Muslim, and modern. It doesn't work; they'll be in the shitter within the next few decades.

(not that I have a problem with men being dominant in a society, but there needs to be quality control. In SA there isn't, just any dude can claim a girl just 'cause he's a dude - doesn't matter if he's a physically abusive psycho)

Of course, children in societies that practice arranged marriage are unquestionably better-behaved than those in liberal ones. Unquestionably. You will NEVER see a child throwing a fit in the dirt of an African mud hut. Nor will you see such children growing up to be drug-addled losers.

Nope, but you will see the kids dying in the African mud hut. They don't have the fucking energy to misbehave. Not growing up to be drug addicts? Well I suppose in Ethiopia, where arranged marriages are still popular, we can just ignore the glue and paint huffing problems, along with the khat (stuff's legal but it's still a problem). That's just one example.

What about a lifetime of resentment if your parents paired you up with a complete airhead? What if your arranged husband likes to get drunk and assault you?

Those societies have just as many problems. Not that I don't agree that liberal societies produce bad children, but I would avoid such sweeping generalizations in the future, they do not lend credence to your arguments.

So there is currently an immense push to force anybody who achieves more than this, and anyone who lives by the standards of strict masculine power, to feel guilty. Some succumb. Feminism emerges. If you think this is false, just ask yourself who gave women the vote. It wasn't women.

Yeah, but who ultimately persuaded those in power to give women the vote? Women. I don't think voting should be for everyone, in fact I think most people shouldn't be allowed to vote (not many of them give a shit anyway, so I don't see how this would be a problem). But the point is, I don't know if you're seeing a middle ground here. You seem to think column A is feminazi uberliberal retard, and column B is ideal meek subservient woman. Correct me if I'm missing something. I would also like to point out what Umbrage said as I really think it hits the nail squarely:

Nearly all of you see the world as if it were NYC, and all its people as if they were Westerners. Some of you can't run your own lives but think you can run everyone elses'. All of you start from assumptions to make more assumptions. The only thing you have any control over, at all, is your own behaviour. That would be a good place to start with the business of changing anything else.

The nature of trade is surplus goods. What you are describing is the nature of con men.

The nature of trade is getting something you want for something you don't, or at least for something you want less. That is not the nature of con men - although believing in something like rights would certainly lead you to think such a way. It's the nature of men. No "con" necessary.

There is nothing inherently wrong about giving up something you dislike in favor of something you do; your body does it every time it takes a dump or processes protein. If both parties in the trade end up giving away nothing in exchange for something, what's the problem? Who got conned? They're both satisfied. But, because you have this idea that value is more than a human invention, you find evil within said exchange; not because any suffering has occurred, but because it goes against what you believe. And fallot did not say rights are OWNED, he said they are OWED.

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There's this logical flaw about the "no rights" argument that irks me. If there are no rights then what gives you the right to tell people they have no rights? We're just talking about different values here.

Logical flaw? Where? If there are no rights, nothing I tell people is subject to the concept. It's only a logical flaw so long as there are rights. I don't need the right to do anything I do - I am a man. I will do as I do, and there will be consequences deriving from those actions, which will inspire others to act in turn, leading to more consequences still, etc., etc. At no point does any of this need to be justified - it just is. It can be explained, but that's about it.

The only logical flaw is thinking that rights exist "just because." And although your attempt to prove their existence based on an innate human sense of fairness was noble, it does not at all reflect the general view of rights and you know it. Aside from that, it was also fruitless, because humans are innately wrong about all sorts of things; you describe nothing more than a failure of perception, one along the lines of thinking the world is flat because it that's how it looks to the naked eye. You are literally trying to tell me that "because we feel something is real, it is." I find you to be one of the better posters here, and more often than not I agree with you. Even when I don't, I never have a problem respecting you. In fact, I respect you too much to give this argument any sort of serious consideration. Get real.

If you were claiming that rights were God-given, I would still have to disagree but at least your position would be logically sound. Saying that "they only exist in our mind" cannot be rationally followed by "they still exist." THAT is a logical flaw; you know what another term is for something that exists only in the mind? Imaginary. Yes, this affects human behavior - nobody ever said otherwise. No, it is not real - mostly because humans cannot create things telekinetically. As far as I know.

You shouldn't treat different things as if they are the same, but the problem here is that treating things (women) differently usually meant treating them not as well (in the past). What is sick about women wanting to be treated fairly in society? Honestly I don't think we're going to agree so I think we should just drop this part.

So do you wish to treat them fairly or unfairly? You accept that they are different, yet also say that it's not fair to treat them as if they are. "Fair" doesn't mean "the same." If you want to treat women UNfairly, treat them as you would treat men. Of course, no feminist ACTUALLY wants this - they want men and women to be treated the same, but once they find out how men actually interact with each other, it offends them, and so they must change men's behavior to fall in line with how they actually want to be treated, which is "as women." Which doesn't even touch on the fact that a man who takes pride in his nature AS A MAN would never, ever, treat a women the same way he treats a man. Doing so is essentially a tacit approval of the idea that the concept of femininity is worthless.

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No. Helpless people need to be done away with. They can't be helped. Why would you want to even bother? Assist those who are capable to be the best.

This is not how you run a society. You claim membership to an ideology that CLAIMS to seek maximization of everyone's (i.e., women's) potential; and yet drop something like this, showing that you care little for what is purportedly the driving motivation behind all sorts of -isms, including feminism. The best possible outcome is not to eliminate defects, but to turn them into successes. I know this is not usually possible, but my point is regarding your outlook.

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Lol, no, it doesn't. Not for long anyway.

It doesn't, and yet it does? Although I did read the rest of your paragraph, its inclusion seems completely unnecessary when you start off contradicting your own argument. We'll see how "not long" it takes Saudi Arabia to actually end, once it ends. Until then, the fact is, that nation is successful whereas others in similarly fortunate situations are not. This is true no matter how much it bothers you.

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Nope, but you will see the kids dying in the African mud hut. They don't have the fucking energy to misbehave. Not growing up to be drug addicts? Well I suppose in Ethiopia, where arranged marriages are still popular, we can just ignore the glue and paint huffing problems, along with the khat (stuff's legal but it's still a problem). That's just one example.

They have tremendous energy, actually. I doubt you have actual experience living among such people, because if you did you would not be saying something so visibly false.

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What about a lifetime of resentment if your parents paired you up with a complete airhead? What if your arranged husband likes to get drunk and assault you?

Those societies have just as many problems. Not that I don't agree that liberal societies produce bad children, but I would avoid such sweeping generalizations in the future, they do not lend credence to your arguments.

Like I said: interact with people who actually live these lives. Get as far away from Western influence as you can. Based on your positions in this thread, I assure you that you will be shocked at the levels of contentment you discover. Don't rely on emotional movie plots or political gambits to guide your view of worlds different from our own.

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Yeah, but who ultimately persuaded those in power to give women the vote? Women. I don't think voting should be for everyone, in fact I think most people shouldn't be allowed to vote (not many of them give a shit anyway, so I don't see how this would be a problem). But the point is, I don't know if you're seeing a middle ground here. You seem to think column A is feminazi uberliberal retard, and column B is ideal meek subservient woman. Correct me if I'm missing something. I would also like to point out what Umbrage said

Women should not be able to vote, but that is only because they first should not be a sizable presence in the workforce, which is a whole other can of worms. Men persuaded each other to give women the vote. The notion that women convinced them to do this is ridiculous. If this were true, and it were also true that women were owed this "right," howcome it took tens of thousands of years to achieve this state? Are you saying that women were too dumb to convince their men in the past? Are you saying that they were so trodden-upon that they were literally incapable of standing up for themselves? Or are you saying that they understood the concept of a division in responsibilities among men and women? I don't follow the (retarded) idea that people in older times were dumber than ourselves, so I'm inclined to follow the latter. Most people follow the middle proposition, which sounds stupid to me, as we're not talking about a small percentage of the population. When people are that beaten-down, they revolt. Men gave women the vote because they benefited from doing so. This is just plain old human nature. If their women in fact convinced them to do this, they did it by convincing them it was for their own benefit. Of course, there is no possible way to convince someone that giving away power for free is beneficial to your own position of power, so there had to be a trade; in exchange for losing power, they were made to feel noble. Nobody gives something for nothing. And even if men had, in fact, given women this privilege for free, out of a true sense of nobility, all that does is show feminism to be completely UNnecessary - because men had more power, and were just in its use.

I don't see columns A or B in women's behavior at all. I see columns A and B in men's views of reality, with women essentially molding themselves somewhere in the field that exists between these two standards. But women act essentially the same everywhere you go - there are varying degrees to which they reinforce their own varying traits, but the primary essence of womanhood I have never seen changed. That is one of the inherent qualities (not "strengths", not "weaknesses") of the female; she is malleable. Ultimately, though, it is still men who set the field on which women play. And this will always be the case. And it is good.

Thank you both for what you wrote in this thread. While intellectually to me, it seemed foolhardy to deny women the right to vote (women and men together build the family, why should they not build civilization together?), you have given me things to contemplate.

By which i mean, pointing out the intellect has limits that cannot be covered by experience. And I have no experience of another perspective. So where does my opinion arise?

I've been thrown into a state of agnosticism about my own belief. Perhaps in civilization-building, it's man's role to run politics? Even our society did that only a couple hundred years ago, and by most accounts it was a more pleasant time.

Or perhaps you're both backwards misogynistic closet-Muslims, which is what a liberal would say. Although to me, that seems unlikely.

I don't follow the (retarded) idea that people in older times were dumber than ourselves

Perhaps this should be reconsidered. People in past times almost certainly did have a lower IQ than is prevalent in the world today, but maybe that's the key to it. With a lower IQ, they might be more likely to use "built in" or "common sense" (gene-derived, universe derived, tradition derived, however you want to call it) approaches to problems rather than pure rationality. The struggle against death leads to greater and greater complexity, to the point where the faculty which leads to this complexity overwhelms common sense; intelligence. You can even see this trend right now, conservatives have a lower average IQ than liberals, the higher up you go on the IQ scale the more dysfunction appears. It seems to come with a certain openness, whether internal or external (and imo, pathological, see Haidt). That would make us both smarter and much dumber than past people, in a manner of speaking.

The notion of this "Dark Enlightenment" (name pinched from Roissy) requires some feeling to it, it is rational in acceptance of the irrational aspects of human nature, not pretending it should be otherwise like liberals like to (pretending rationality or a blank slate nature).

I must be an exception to your rule. There's nobody more (laterally) intelligent, nor anyone more sensible. And nobody more conservative, in its purest sense. But, as I am so fond of pointing out: I don't think. Intelligence, alone, is reliably counterproductive. It must be subordinate to common-sense. Anybody can be intelligent, through accident of birth. Not everyone, however, can be sensible.

I must be an exception to your rule. There's nobody more (laterally) intelligent, nor anyone more sensible. And nobody more conservative, in its purest sense. But, as I am so fond of pointing out: I don't think. Intelligence, alone, is reliably counterproductive. It must be subordinate to common-sense. Anybody can be intelligent, through accident of birth. Not everyone, however, can be sensible.

Bear in mind I am not talking about a dichotomy where more intelligence = less common sense, it's just more likely that intelligent people would tend to ignore their common sense (which can be non-rational, but arrives at correct conclusions more often than not) and hence leave it underdeveloped. You can of course, still realize this, whether independently or because of a society that instills a certain point of view in you that is conducive towards this realization. Conservatism isn't just in your head, it's also in your heart. You don't just realize the value of conservation but feel it to be a beautiful thing.

sur·plus1. something that remains above what is used or needed.2. an amount, quantity, etc., greater than needed.3. agricultural produce or a quantity of food grown by a nation or area in excess of its needs, especially such a quantity of food purchased and stored by a governmental program of guaranteeing farmers a specific price for certain crops.

That is not the nature of con men - although believing in something like rights would certainly lead you to think such a way. It's the nature of men. No "con" necessary.

Quote from: dictionary

con (adjective)1. involving abuse of confidence: a con trick.verb (used with object)2. to swindle; trick: That crook conned me out of all my savings.3. to persuade by deception, cajolery, etc.noun4. a confidence game or swindle.5. a lie, exaggeration, or glib self-serving talk: He had a dozen different cons for getting out of paying traffic tickets.

White men traded worthless beads to red men in order to fleece them of their valuables. Red men eagerly scooped up the priceless beads in return for their own worthless junk. Each assigned value to what the other considered worthless. This is the nature of trade.

The nature of trade is surplus goods. What you are describing is the nature of con men.

Quote from: dictionary

trade1. the act or process of buying, selling, or exchanging commodities, at either wholesale or retail, within a country or between countries: domestic trade; foreign trade.2. a purchase or sale; business deal or transaction.3. an exchange of items, usually without payment of money.4. any occupation pursued as a business or livelihood.5. some line of skilled manual or mechanical work; craft: the trade of a carpenter; printer's trade.

NOW LOOK AGAIN:

Quote from: dictionary

con (adjective)1. involving abuse of confidence: a con trick.verb (used with object)2. to swindle; trick: That crook conned me out of all my savings.3. to persuade by deception, cajolery, etc.noun4. a confidence game or swindle.5. a lie, exaggeration, or glib self-serving talk: He had a dozen different cons for getting out of paying traffic tickets.

If both parties in the trade end up giving away nothing in exchange for something, what's the problem? Who got conned? They're both satisfied.

Except they don't give away nothing for something. You're oversimplifying this. Even the meeting and the transport of goods costs time and gold. And unless you're some isolated tribe you'll have plenty of other trading partners to choose from. And sometimes it's better for business to let products rot away or to even destroy your own stock, you don't see supermarkets handing out food because "otherwise they'd have to throw it away" do you?

, you find evil within said exchange; not because any suffering has occurred, but because it goes against what you believe.

Bullshit. What do my beliefs have to do with other people's sense of fairness? You're confusing me for a white knight. My personal beliefs are unimportant in this matter and we're talking about a 2 dimensional example that crow provided.

All I'm saying is [paraphrase]"gosh guys did you know that everybody has a sense of fairness? That means that rights do exist because in our hearts we believe in them! Awww, isn't that cute?"[/paraphrase]

Why are you being so defensive about that? Rights are part of our aesthetics: "oh wow that's beautiful, oh wow that's powerful, oh wow that's unfair." So to argue that rights don't exist is foolish. So you believe in the right to trick others during trade? Then you still believe in rights! You're just having a difference of aesthetics. As a result you're like one side of a coin telling the other side it doesn't exist.

There's this logical flaw about the "no rights" argument that irks me. If there are no rights then what gives you the right to tell people they have no rights? We're just talking about different values here.

Logical flaw? Where? If there are no rights, nothing I tell people is subject to the concept. It's only a logical flaw so long as there are rights.

I don't need the right to do anything I do - I am a man. I will do as I do, and there will be consequences deriving from those actions, which will inspire others to act in turn, leading to more consequences still, etc., etc. At no point does any of this need to be justified - it just is. It can be explained, but that's about it.

And how exactly do those consequences occur? Can you argue that those consequences have absolutely nothing to do with a sense of justice? Someone hurts you and you won't fight back? If you fight back then why? Because you don't want to be injured? So you believe you have the right not be injured? If you believe you don't have the right not to be injured then why are you fighting back? Because it hurts? So what if it hurts? So what if you die? Yet your natural instinct compels you to fight or flee for survival, or your instincts abandon you and you succumb to your fears and become the plaything of your oppressor. It's all possible and it's all shaped by our sense of justice on which our discipline and moral codes are based.

And although your attempt to prove their existence based on an innate human sense of fairness was noble, it does not at all reflect the general view of rights and you know it. Aside from that, it was also fruitless, because humans are innately wrong about all sorts of things; you describe nothing more than a failure of perception, one along the lines of thinking the world is flat because it that's how it looks to the naked eye.

So much paradox it hurts. How can humans be considered wrong if there is no right? Stick to your story: humans just are and everything is a consequence completely unrelated to our sense of fairness. That's what you were saying earlier anyway. You just contradicted yourself.

You are literally trying to tell me that "because we feel something is real, it is." I find you to be one of the better posters here, and more often than not I agree with you. Even when I don't, I never have a problem respecting you. In fact, I respect you too much to give this argument any sort of serious consideration. Get real.

We don't just feel justice, it motivates us. I explained this a few posts ago. It is part of human nature and it is part of our aesthetics. It binds people in agreement or it drives them apart.

If you were claiming that rights were God-given, I would still have to disagree but at least your position would be logically sound. Saying that "they only exist in our mind" cannot be rationally followed by "they still exist." THAT is a logical flaw; you know what another term is for something that exists only in the mind? Imaginary. Yes, this affects human behavior - nobody ever said otherwise. No, it is not real - mostly because humans cannot create things telekinetically. As far as I know.

Our sense of fairness exists because it serves a function. It's a cognitive ability, something that helps humans reason. I've explained it all before by now.

Haha. I don't have time for a full reply at the moment, as I'm merely getting ready for the day - just wanted to say that I doubt we would agree on that either :p And pointing out the distinction between fallot's "owed" vs. your mistakenly-read "owned" was not a criticism; I was giving you the opportunity to modify the relevant paragraph you wrote to be more effective and appropriate to what he actually said, as the two words mean completely different things.